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The next Foundations of Mind conference is coming to UC Berkeley August 13th through the 15th, and I’d love to see you there!

Foundations of Mind: Dialogues Between Worldviews creates interdisciplinary dialogue about Mind/Nous in a way that transcends a reduction of Mind to psychological process. This project asserts that the proper study of mind is the most important scientific venture in which humanity has engaged. We are also aware that humans have struggled with explaining mental actions for thousands of years, and indeed that the products of mind are available around us as the arts, as science, and as social organization. In recent years, there has been progress in neuroscience and in computer simulation of behavior, and also a growing sense through quantum mechanics that something is missing in our objective explanations of physical nature. This somehow seems to be linked with the mystery of subjectivity — why each of us feels that “I am.”

More speakers will be added; we are also pleased to host members of the Biohackers and consciousness hackers communities in the Bay area.

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Foundations Of Mind Conference Sessions Include:

Living the Quantum Paradigm
3105 Tolman Hall UC Berkeley
Aug 13 2015 10 am to noon
Chair: Cynthia Sue Larson
This session invites interdisciplinary dialogue and exercises addressing the underlying philosophy and logic of quantum physics, and approaches to living in accordance with quantum principles. Questions about the nature of reality require inclusion of quantum physics beyond the historical “shut up and calculate” approach, which has provided multiple interpretations of quantum physics without agreement on the philosophical quantum paradigm foundation. Whereas quantum physics challenges scientists to comprehend whether, how, or where a boundary between classical and quantum physics may exist, philosophy promotes critical thinking and clarity about arguments, terminology, and ideas. Scientific philosophy can lead the way toward development of new theoretical approaches and alternate interpretations, while finding conceptual weak points in theories and arguments. Experiential approaches to living in accordance with quantum principles provide unique opportunities for appreciating the feeling of levels of consciousness and the dream-like nature of reality. In Vedanta, the body is a synonym for sensations and the mind for thoughts; both are presented to consciousness, the fundamental eternal reality. Yet exercises are also proposed to maintain this insight, which otherwise does not persist.

Session on Ontology
3105 Tolman Hall UC Berkeley
Aug 13 1pm to 3pm
Chair: Michael Ranney
It is our belief that much grief, and waste of taxpayers’ money, could be avoided with an appropriate reparse of nature that acknowledges there are rifts between the quantum and classical physical realities, and further ontological discontinuities at the biological and intentional thresholds. It is further our belief that the relative failure of the HGP, and imminent debacle of both the Obama and “Blue brain” neuro initiatives, are dues to precisely this unwillingness to cater to ontology. Moreover, even incessant crawling of the web has failed to yield anything other than at best mediocre results in machine translation. Finally, this tendency manifests itself in the social sciences with psychologism, the reduction of exigent social dynamics to cognitive and other psychological theories of how these forces are processed. This has led on the one hand to the non-engaged intellectual; on the other, to bewildering interpretations of postmodern thinkers geared mainly to giving instructors a free pass. This session invites papers that address technical issues in science and the arts under this rubric and/or consider the question of authentic political engagement. In particular, the latter category of papers may explore the fact that reality is relative to consciousness and yet transcends it, As we act, we become aware of being objects in a social space that yet can be magicked away in a classroom.

In the Absence of Theory; Return to Villa Serbelloni?
3105 Tolman Hall UC Berkeley
Aug 13 3-30 to 5-30
Chair: Seán Ó Nualláin
Several decades before the HGP was initiated, a diverse group of scientists convened at Villa Serbelloni to tackle the troubling lack of theory in biology. The solutions they proposed were various, from an untroubling emphasis on hierarchy to a reinstatement of Aristotelian material and final causality to a network-based approach to the interaction of metabolism and genetic code. It is fair to say that the HGP to its cost – and that of the public who paid for it – ignores these guidelines. Is it time for a fresh period of reflection?

Session on Hacking consciousness; non-invasive probes into subjectivity
FOM 2 3105 Tolman Hall UC Berkeley
Aug 14 2015 10 am to noon
Chair; Justin Riddle (Ph.D. candidate, UC Berkeley)
While a century ago dreams were regarded as revelatory of true psychic dynamics, a later generation took to drugs for that same purpose. A new ethos is stressing invasive methods that essentially involve consent forms being signed by patients already stressed by imminent surgery.

While the results of this has been mixed, the fact remains that there already exists an array of tools that can shape experience without the risks of drugs or surgery. This session will investigate thesetools,like TMS and EEG, and their results. It will feature discussion of synchronized gamma and whether it indeed is the signature of consciousness that many claim it is.

The following is intended as a non-coercive guideline for themes for paper submissions ie other themes are welcome;
Title; “One Magisterium; a new science-religion dialogue”
Themes

A Magisterium is an area of teaching authority. As we celebrate the 450th anniversary of Galileo’s birth, it seems clear that science has prevailed over superstition. The “new atheists” claim that there is indeed one Magisterium, that of science.

At first glance, it seems that science will continue its march to victory over the epistemological claims of religion, eventually reducing them to the null set. More consequentially, it is increasingly accepted among religious “thinkers” as among scientific such that the magisterium, the teaching authority, of science trumps that of religion. The result is a consensus that state power, based as it should be on natural law, itself a reflection of the natural order of things, will increasingly base itself on science.

The evidence seems overwhelming; on the positive side there are physical theories accurate in their predictions to a part in a trillion, print-outs of one’s genome for a few dollars, a steadfast adherence to the notion that the mind IS the brain and that the brain is being mapped. On the negative side there is in the epistemological domain the clear absurdities of the biblical account of creation and the notion of transubstantiation, let alone reincarnation, and in the social domain the horrors of religious terrorism and institutional child abuse.

Yet things are now not quite so simple. It would be a pity if citizenship was reduced to following the dictates of scientists we cannot understand; yet its mythic poverty is not the only limitation of science. For a start, “science” itself means knowledge and that gives little clue that science reflects a set of practices based on a set of logico-mathematical insights and related physical observations, from which it takes its impetus; most of its practitioners are not versed in the philosophy of science and are not aware of the controversial status of theory.

However, that type of brake put on the progress of “science” may only be the beginning. The Victorian universe was eternal; the modern one features creation from a single point, rough-hew this how we may. Indeed, the cosmos shows fine-tuning of physical constants in a manner that leads to complex conscious creatures driven to understand said cosmos, all the while debating furiously how these constants came to be just so. The Darwinian biosphere was atomistic chance and biological necessity; ours features far-from equilibrium conditions like the gaseous contents of the atmosphere that facilitate our existence. In fact, man is right back at the center of things in a way no-one dared to predict.

There are many other issues that beg explanation along these lines; in fact, it could be argued that we have gotten good enough t science to become aware of its limitations. For example, Goedel DID point out paradoxes about cognition in mathematical systems and the puzzling ontological status of infinite sets that indeed suggest access to processes that are outside the Turing/Church realm. It also is arguable that the observer is still enmeshed in state-vector reduction, with attempts to dispense with him still highly controversial

Indeed, the hitherto “subjective” notion of information is now immanent in third-person physics, as the idea of code is in biology. As we explore in mathematical physics, we find that concepts like symmetry, far from being psychological mechanisms, seem almost to have a deus ex machina status, guiding us to ever deeper insights into nature. Conversely, in areas like quantum field theory, we sometimes do “bad math”, with non-converging infinite series, where any number could be obtained, and yet it works. Both subtle and devious is the Lord.

This is not an attempt to re-introduce creationism; it is rather an attempt at broadening the debate. We can continue along the lines above. Folk psychology, rather than eliminative materialism, will prevail precisely because it is a more effective algorithmic compression for most people than eliminative materialism and it is attested in its strengths and weaknesses by tens of millennia of human societies. People striving for self-development will passionately, head and heart together, seek through the intellect the ground of Being, and/or attempt to eviscerate the self through compassionate action/observing it to death, and/or attempt to change the world, if necessary through artistic creation.

We can call such activities attempts at “ontological self-transformation”, in the manner that James Carroll characterizes his training for the priesthood as requiring that he “ontologically” transform himself. We can then speculate how this this notion of “ontological self-transformation” might map onto evolutionary as onto scholastic thought.

All these activities exist in the broader society outside the academy – indeed several of them, like the arts arguably work better outside it. This allows us to introduce a critical distinction between different movements in society, of which the academic is just one. In fact, as of the early 21st century, the academic sphere is mutating its role in society so quickly that it behooves us to attempt a prediction of its role; the academic sphere will fall to whoever can attract the brightest and most free-spirited young adults to spend 3-4 years under their discipline. The web means we no longer need a physical premises; the paralysis of science in controversies about the status of the “gene”, “dark matter and energy”, the “central dogma” and so on means that the truth-seeking passion of these kids can better be satisfied without state funding that turns them into idiot savants.

So much for the academic “magisterium”; it is in fact mainly an environment for the pedagogical process. According to thinkers like Drummond, there is but one magisterium in society; it unifies the movements misread as “science” and “religion”; it invokes as its highest value the further evolution of man singular, and humanity as a whole; it accepts the political and scientific progress made since the renaissance, and embraces scientific discovery; it does not accept greedy reductionism aka scientism. While its community, culture and ceremonies are yet to be formed, the notion that something must be considered as sacred, be it the organic psychological development of our kids or the integrity of the biosphere, is accepted. It is also clear that the corporate destruction of our higher nature requires a reply, and that the political space still exists for both an activist and a quietist response, with much of the tools still available free in western societies.

Papers are invited which:

– address any of the themes suggested above, whether agreeing or disagreeing – even if strongly – with the implicit and explicit contentions

address the issue of overlapping, singular, or no magisteria

address the issue of reductionism, failed or successful;

consider the issue of ontology;

contrast approaches to the fine-tuning problem

Address such controversies as the horizon problem

comment of the appropriateness in science of biology’s “central dogma”

Propose mechanisms for macro-evolution, if necessary through code biology

Propose appropriate types of reduction, for example from Biology to physics/chemistry and from psychology to neuroscience

Consider the issue of truth, state power and authority in the space initially opened up by thinkers like Hobbes;

Consider the ontology of Buddhism as expressed in the Pali canon vis a vis its psychologyQuantum fluctuations and God of the gaps for example what are the implications of the quantum mind hypothesis if true?
Lost and esoteric Christianities–for example, does Exodus 17:7 refer to an experience transcending Yahweh?

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics on numerous shows including the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, the BBC and One World with Deepak Chopra. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

I’ve been following Professor Yasunori Nomura‘s work this past year with tremendous interest, since he was one of the first theoretical physicists to publish a paper on the topic of the many worlds of quantum mechanics being one and the same as the eternally inflating multiverse. This perspective is one I consider to be extremely promising, both for its elegance and also for its ability to explain much that other theories cannot so easily address.

I was thrilled when attending a screening of the recent documentary film, “Particle Fever,” about the hunt for the Higgs boson to see Yasunori’s name up on the podium. I’d received an invitation to attend this UC Berkeley event through the Physics Department where I’d studied and received my degree many years ago. Dr. Yasunori Nomura was one of the panelists who talked about what we’re learning from the hunt for the Higgs boson after the show, along with Lawrence Hall, Marjorie Shapiro, Walter Murch, Mark Levinson, Petr Horava, Beate Heinemann, and Surjeet Rajendran. Dr. Nomura is a Professor at UC Berkeley at the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, where his work is primarily focused on particle physics and cosmology.

CYNTHIA: Thank you so very much for taking time from your busy schedule to answer a few questions! I also want to thank you for writing such a clear and persuasive paper in the Journal of High Energy Physics, “Physical Theories, Eternal Inflation, and Quantum Universe.” You’ve also developed a new theoretical framework to describe dynamics of quantum gravity in low energy regimes, preserving locality. What’s so wonderfully exciting about bringing these ideas together is that you are presenting us with a view of general relativistic global spacetime being an emerging classical concept that arises from a special relativistic, quantum mechanical description of quantum gravity. When these concepts are applied to the idea of the multiverse, we then have a multiverse with no beginning and no end, but rather time that emerges locally in branches. Is this a fairly good summary of your most current perspective? And in what new directions is your work going next?

YASUNORI: Yes, that is a good summary of my perspective. Our world is quantum mechanical. Quantum mechanics governs how nature works at the deepest level, not just in small subatomic scales but also at the largest scale of the eternally inflating multiverse. At the same time, quantum mechanics is a “weird theory” which predicts many counter-intuitive phenomena, and from which the “normal world” we perceive emerges only in a certain limit. This includes concepts such as space and time. Furthermore, quantum mechanics is an intrinsically probabilistic theory—every prediction you make is probabilistic. My current effort focuses on developing a deeper understanding of these issues. What is the detailed microscopic mechanism underlying the emergence of spacetime? What does the probability really mean? How does understanding of these issues help revealing the so-far elusive quantum theory of gravity?

CYNTHIA: I love the way you describe our world as being quantum mechanical at the deepest level! This conceptualization has not been popularly embraced, perhaps due to the counter-intuitive “weirdness” of quantum mechanics. You make excellent points about quantum mechanics being intrinsically probabilistic, and I appreciate your emphasis on the importance of better understanding what probability really means. In the introduction of your 2011 paper, “Quantum Mechanics, Spacetime Locality, and Gravity,” you point out that, “Quantum mechanics introduced the concept of probability to physics at the fundamental level. This has led to the issue of the quantum-to-classical transition, in particular the measurement problem.”What is needed for us to better understand probability in a quantum world?

YASUNORI: What the probability in quantum mechanics really means is a deep question, with which people have been struggling for a century. At the most naive level, it means that when we prepare an ensemble of a large number of systems all of which are in an identical state, then the records of performing physical measurements on these systems are distributed according to what quantum mechanics predicts. Does this mean that we simply do not know enough details of the systems, and if we do, then we can predict the outcome of measuring each member of the ensemble with certainty? People certainly wondered this possibility in early days in developing quantum mechanics, but we are now almost certain that this is not the case. In quantum mechanical world, the outcome of a measurement is intrinsically probabilistic—the probabilistic nature is not a manifestation of our incomplete knowledge of the system. A question then arises when we ask what happens if we make a “single” measurement on “a” system in our universe. According to quantum mechanics, the result is “probabilistic,” but what does that really mean? Where is the ensemble? Are there many universes which are “distributed” according to the prediction of quantum mechanics? This is where the necessity of considering many universes—or multiverse—comes in. We need to consider cosmology in a deepest sense to really address this problem.

CYNTHIA: This suggests there is a deeper interconnectedness that goes beyond any “single” measurement on “a” system that is occurring everywhere–and not just in the realm of quantum particles, because we cannot assume that any given experiment is closed off from its surrounding environment. We definitely require an understanding of probabilities beyond mere statistical frequencies, since we can’t run experiments on multiple versions of the universe! What are your thoughts about the value of the Bayesian interpretation of probability for quantum cosmology–the idea that before we start measuring probabilities, we must set initial assumptions about the probabilities?

YASUNORI: Yes, the issue is certainly relevant beyond the realm of quantum particles at small scales. Quantum effects are there even at large distances—they are simply hard to recognize for an observer like us living in “a branch” of a complete quantum state. We still do not know exactly what form the physical law that allows us to address this issue will take, but I can certainly imagine that some sort of Bayesian ways of thinking may play an important, and perhaps even crucial, role in formulating such a law. In fact, there are already several hints to move forward, based on consistency of quantum cosmology. (Another obvious clue is that the new rule must reduce to the standard Born rule in situations in which an ensemble is explicitly available to an observer.) Perhaps, explorations of this issue may lead to a new theory beyond quantum mechanics, not just reinterpretation (or reformulation) of the standard quantum mechanics.

CYNTHIA: Quantum cosmology is an especially exciting field right now, as it is becoming clear that multiverse theories can be modeled using computer simulations that can be compared to cosmic background radiation. When you envision a new theory beyond our current conceptualization of quantum mechanics, what ideas do you find most interesting now?

YASUNORI: Yes, quantum cosmology is an especially exciting field right now because of observational and theoretical evidence pointing to the multiverse, gathered in the last decade or two. We are, however, not at a stage in which we can simulate the multiverse as we do for cosmic background radiation. The problems we are struggling are still conceptual: what is the probability in the cosmological context, etc. I am, however, optimistic about near future progress. One idea which I think promising, and which I have been pursuing, is that “time” we perceive emerges only locally in relevant branches (e.g. in our own universe) in the static multiverse state. This would solve many conceptual issues such as what is the beginning or end of the multiverse.

CYNTHIA: Considering time to be more of a variable than a constant in the multiverse is fascinating and mind-bending. We now have measurements from our most accurate strontium atomic clocks showing that time elapses more slowly at lower altitudes, influenced by gravity, so a clock positioned just a few centimeters higher will read a different time. NIST’s chief timekeeper, Tom O’Brian, recently stated in an NPR interview that, “My own personal opinion is that time is a human construct.” Could you describe a little bit more about how might we envision time as being something we perceive locally in relevant branches of the multiverse–is there some way to visualize such a thing?

YASUNORI: What we call time is nothing more than (a very special form of) correlations between physical objects. Consider throwing a baseball. It is usually stated that the baseball then moves (relative to the earth) as “time passes.” What is really happening, however, is that the relative location between the baseball and the earth is correlated with configurations of other physical systems, e.g. the location of the hands of a clock, relative configurations of the Sun, Earth, and Moon (although their changes are minuscule in the timescale of the motion of the baseball), configurations of synapses in your brain, etc. To describe all these correlations, one may introduce some parameter “t” and write the configurations of the systems as functions of this “spurious” parameter t as we describe a curve in a two-dimensional plane using a parametric representation: (x(t), y(t)). This parameter t is precisely what we call time—it does not really “exist” as a physical object!

A real question then is why there exists such a special form of correlations between configurations of various physical systems, more specifically correlations that are described in a simple manner using a single spurious parameter t. This is what really must be explained, which my static quantum multiverse proposal is trying to address. Note that these special corrections (i.e. time) need not exist in all the branches of the multiverse state. We only know experimentally that they exist in the branches corresponding to our universe.

CYNTHIA: You point out that our conceptualization of infinitely large space that we associate with eternal inflation is really just an illusion, and a more accurate way to describe everything is that we exist within an intrinsically probabilistic multiverse. The vastness of eternally inflating space can thus be found in probability–in which an initial state evolves into a superposition of states, with branches occurring whenever bubble universes burst forth. In your “Static Quantum Multiverse” 2012 paper, you explain how the multiverse need not evolve in order to be consistent with an arrow of time–which presents a completely different picture of cosmology than the currently popular sense of infinitely large space. Within this static quantum multiverse, can you envision there being a place for subjective observation with its associated sense of past, present and future—so important to people, as Bernard d’Espagnat’s observes, “Time is at the heart of all that is important to human beings.” For example, when imagining ourselves throwing a baseball, is there anything we can identify as being ‘now’–the present moment?

YASUNORI: You correctly summarize that the vastness of eternally inflating space can be found in probability space. In a sense, the “Static Quantum Multiverse” proposal simply says that the vastness of time should also be found in the probability space. In this picture, the (static) multiverse state contains many “observers,” e.g. myself, at “different times,” each of whom has his/her own sense of past, present and future. In your example, each of these “observers” (which we usually describe as a single observer in different moments) has his/her own sense of now, with the baseball located in the place determined mostly by the Newtonian mechanics. I can’t affirm that the absence of the absolute notion of ‘now’ is not a problem, but I think it is not.

CYNTHIA: I appreciate how your static quantum multiverse model’s inclusion of probability space and time provides such an elegant view of the cosmos while allowing for free will and unique individual experience. Thank you for sharing some of your fascinating ideas and observations about quantum cosmology, time and space! In addition to reading your many publications–which number 111 to date, according to ResearchGate–how best can people follow your work and what you are doing?

Like this:

This can be an amazing year for you, regardless of whether or not you made (or broke) any new year’s resolutions. At this time when the placebo effect has mysteriously doubled in efficacy over the past thirty years as people benefit from sugar pills and “sham” surgery so much that Harvard University has created an institute to study the placebo effect… it’s becoming increasingly clear that there is a powerful mind-matter connection.

The mind-matter connection became crystal clear to me in the early 1980s when I came to UC Berkeley as an undergraduate student in the Physics program. At that time, I was one of the very few caucasians in the Physics program, and one of just a handful of women. When I sat down in one of my first lecture halls, surrounded by hundreds of mostly male Asian students, I experienced a very primal sense of fear–a feeling of “you don’t belong here.”

Fortunately, this was a familiar feeling that I’d learned to deal with before, as just two years earlier I’d been the only girl in my high school physics class. One would think such things don’t really matter, except every time a female high school student walked past the windows in our high school physics class, the teacher stopped talking mid-sentence, silence descended upon the class, and all eyes watched the young lady stroll the length of the classroom as she walked past outside.

I’d learned while taking advanced math classes and physics classes in high school to pretend that “lots of young girls just like you do great in math and science,” and this was the same cheery inner pep talk I gave myself that first year as a Physics major at UC Berkeley.

It turns out such an attitude of “faking it ‘til you make it” is enormously useful for all of us as we get older, as scientific studies show that those of us who harbor negative prejudices about old age are statistically more likely to end up the way we presume older people to be. When a group of people were asked to describe qualities typically found in the elderly, those who expected people to deteriorate over time were found by researchers in this longitudinal study to suffer just such a fate, whereas those who viewed the elderly in more favorable light were statistically more likely to be found prospering and thriving many years later.

If you’re wondering what can possibly account for people being healed by fake surgeries and sugar pills, and aging according to largely subconsciously held prejudices about old people… you’re not alone.

Fortunately for all of us, we’re now living through one of the most exciting times in the history of the world when our entire way of thinking about ourselves in relation to the world is being transformed. We’re now at the dawn of the Quantum Age, which was officially ushered in back in September 2013 when Google and NASA’s Ames Research Center purchased the first quantum computer, the D-Wave Two, for $17 million. Thanks to a modicum of transparency with the US government financing of part of this project, we can now track some of the progress in quantum programing at the QUantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QUAIL) at NASA.

So what’s the big deal about this being the dawn of the Quantum Age, and how does that relate to this being such a great year for you?

I was inspired to write my newest book, Quantum Jumps: An Extraordinary Science of Happiness and Prosperity, after seeing a convergence in results from a number of scientific studies showing that quantum phenomena such as superposition of states, entanglement, and teleportation are happening on the macroscopic, human scale. The significance of such phenomena was not lost on me, since for the past fifteen years I’ve been conducting surveys and sharing first-hand reports of a wide variety of seemingly inexplicable experiences through the RealityShifters.com web site. What’s truly exciting now is that thanks to findings from a variety of scientific studies, it’s clear that:

We most likely live in a holographic multiverse of interconnected parallel possible worlds, and

Quantum effects are now being regularly observed on the macroscopic scale (so for example, we can witness quantum entanglement in diamonds that we can hold in our hands).

When we consider some of the quantum phenomena we’re now witnessing in the natural world in birds navigational abilities, in the way plants photosynthesize, and even in the way our very own noses work, we begin to see how we are receiving extraordinary insights into how we benefit from quantum entanglement, quantum coherence, and quantum superposition of states in our everyday lives. Nature shows us that quantum processing is built into plants and animals in such a way that provides something akin to intuitive reasoning that is an integral part of optimizing efficiency in a number of ways. Plants are able to instantly determine the most efficient way to transform a photon to stored energy, by doing something akin to simultaneously comparing all possible pathways, and choosing the best.

For us humans, this kind of natural efficiency is a bit like telling ourselves when taking a test, “You know the answer to this,” and then doing significantly better as a result. In fact, scientists have proven that this type of placebo treatment does indeed improve peoples’ test scores.

Put another way, we can consider the ways that quantum effects can improve our daily lives as doing something American psychologist William James once stated as, “If you want a quality, act as if you already have it.”

So one of the best ways to make this year one of your best years yet is simply to tell yourself that is exactly what is happening now. See what happens when you think or say aloud:

This is one of the best years of my life.

And just for good measure, feel free to add my favorite open-ended question: